When I typed love in the BibleStudyTools.com search box, 526 verses popped up. You and I can most likely anticipate (and even quote) many of them:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,
that whoever believes in him
shall not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16We love because he first loved us.
I John 4:19But the fruit of the Spirit is love…
Galatians 5:22Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your mind.’
This is the first and greatest commandment.
And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
Matthew 22:37-39
A myriad of others—verses we have written, quoted, cross-stitched, calligraphed, memorized, savored, and prayed back to God over the years—could be added to the list.
Look again at the list above. Besides the word love, what do they all have in common? They are found in the New Testament.
Does an unconscious part of us view the God of the Old Testament as the God of righteousness and judgment, while the God of the New Testament is one of love and compassion?
He is the same!
To celebrate HIS GREAT LOVE, our Write the WORD focus for February is love. That’s probably predictable since it is Valentine’s month, but what might be unexpected is all of these verses will come from the Old Testament. When evaluating that list of 526 scriptures, I found 326 in the Old Testament—far too many for our 28 days of Write the Word in February!—so I pared down even further and chose all our love verses from Psalms. (Even then, there were 143! It was excruciating to choose only 28!)
As we celebrate love this month, we may send gifts and valentines to our spouses, our parents, our children, our grandchildren, and many others we love. But let’s begin by celebrating the One who loved us first. The One who not only is loving, but is the embodiment of love. The One who, in creating love, makes it possible in every other relationship. He is love personified. He is God Almighty.
As we love our way through Psalms, we will be empowered and motivated to pray God’s Word back to Him. We will take note of beautiful, almost-poetic prose that the Psalmist repeats over and again:
- Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens…
- His love endures forever…
- Your unfailing love…
We will note that God’s love is good, it is great, and it fills the earth. Savor these words. Write them out. Pray them back to Him. Let them marinate in your heart and mind throughout each day. And let them prompt praise back to the One who created love and who loved you first.
Visit our Downloads page today for your own copies of this month’s Write the WORD bookmark and optional S.O.A.P. study pages, then prepare to write verses about God’s great LOVE during February.
In this week’s teaching video from our study in II Kings, Laura discusses the story of the Shunammite woman from chapter 4. Although we don’t know this woman’s name, we can relate to her and learn from her:
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An earlier version of this post by Laura
was originally published on AReasonForHomeschool.com
